In 2009 there were no mnemonic seeds.
I think there was just a long list of pre-generated private keys and addresses.

But hypnosis is interesting, and you could try it yourself (with selfhypnosis)

I bet it would be quite difficult to remember whole private keys even when hypnotised

Sometimes even unfairness is fair in the long run.
Experiencing unfairness now, can lead to mental growth and positivity later in life.

Things are not as simple as they seem 

Selling or buying 1BTC can be more difficult than you would expect.

The problem is that most exchanges require you to verify your identity before you  can sell or buy bigger amounts of bitcoins. and nowadays 1BTC is a BIG amount LOL 

And verifying your identity (to some exchanges) can be time consuming , expensive or even impossible depending on where you are from.

I downloaded it yesterday.
Thanks to you and whoever made the donation  
Excellent work!

PS. Pretty well compressed. How did you get 900Mb to shrink to 570Mb?
Must be difficult, because the data is quite "random"

Of course  there is a lot of gold in Fort Knox. Why would there not be?

Nowadays there is this thing called "paper gold" and it makes it possible that Fort Knox is FULL of gold and at the same time there is no gold left.

All the gold may have been sold already  (as paper gold), while the physical gold is still stored in Fort Knox. As a matter of fact there is more paper gold than actual gold...

Remember what happened when Germany wanted to move its gold back to Germany. US could not deliver, because all the gold was already used backing up some commitments etc. So they made a deal of delivering the gold a small amount at a time.

I haven't followed if Germany already got their gold back. Probably most of it alredy. 

Practising the memory is the best way to improve memory. (DUH)  It's that simple.

I practised mine, and after a little while I could remember a whole deck of cards, and play chess without seeing the board. Some might think they are "tricks" but learning those  actually also improve all memory use.

If you are interested, Tony Buzan has written many good books about the subject.

I have always wondered why schools don't teach how  the memory works and how to use it in  studying 

You could always generate a 24 word seed with only 12 words. Just repeat every word like a stuttering child  

Or have your 12 words and repeat the last word until you have 24 words, or whatever.

24 words are more secure than 12, but it is your coins...

Satoshi succeeded quite nicely

There is a LOT of gold in our solar system.
And even more in the universe.

I would not call it a limited supply.

But there will only ever be 21M bitcoins 

Exchanges do indeed use Pay to Public Key Hash, but and it is a big BUT. Most exchanges reuse their addresses and so their public key is visible, and hence they are NOT safe from quantum computers.  

All top 5 bitcoin addresses with the largest balances have reused their addresses and hence their public keys are visible. That is more than 600 000 bitcoins. 3 of them are multisig addresses, but even those can be cracked by quantum computer if the public keys are visible.

I would d prefer that exchanges would not re-use their addresses.

An excellent saying  (even though I would change the word "elderly" to "experienced" )

And so true. In any field of life a mentor can help you develop faster and help you avoid some pitfalls.
I do not get why so many of you are against mentors?

The only bad thing about mentors is that finding a good one is difficult.

 

Post a link here, so we can see what you are talking about.
Would be interesting read

Don't know about the money reward, I would prefer bitcoins.

I do not think he "lost" his keys. Instead I think he intentionally did not save them.

He did not try to become rich, instead he was an idealist and wanted to create a new kind of currency. He probably thought that if he would take 1M coins for himself both the credibility of Bitcoin and Satoshi would have suffered, and maybe we would not have bitcoin now.

I believe, Satoshi mined bitcoins with other computers too, and  became rich.  At-least I hope he did

You can't calculate the exact hashpower that would be needed.
Blockchain adjusts the required hashrate about once in every 2 weeks. That means that regardless of the used hashrate about 1 new block is found in 10 minutes (on average).
You can use as much hashpower as you want and still on average only 1 new block will be found every 10 minutes

If Germany would set up its own blockchain, then the hashrate could be much smaller. Especially if it is not made too interesting to existing mining farms. With less competition the difficulty would be easier.

Making transactions in bitcoin network do not really need much energy. What needs energy is competing with other big mining farms. If all of them would slow down their hashrate, we would still be able to make as many transactions, but the energy "requirements" of blockchain would be much smaller.

Competition takes all the energy not the blockchain itself.
 

Not my thing to share. Sorry. But It will probably be published sometime.

Quite strange, because there is very little similarity and in maths usually things are not named based on "feelings". Imho

Not in the same sense. Yes, in adding points you do use mod, but the points themselves go only from 1 to n and never over n. (like they do in DLP)
 
Well. If your private key is bigger than n then your private key will be subtracted by n, but that is a different thing, since then your private key will actually be the smaller key...


Here you are wrong. You certainly CAN multiple an ECC point with a number. That is what you do when you multiple a point with your private key to get the public key. Dividing with a number is also possible. Even though it is almost never mentioned anywhere. IT is possible. I can do it, and if you understand finite fields, so can you.  

What you cannot do is multiplying a point with a point, or dividing a point by a point. That is a completely different thing and is not defined in EC.

I recently reviewed an interesting work about solving ECDLP  (that Bitcoin uses too.)

Most people think we will need a quantum computer(QC) for cracking ECC, but I am not so sure about it anymore. Conventional methods may prove to be good enough.

Bitcoin uses "Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem" (ECDLP). But why is it called Discrete Logarithm Problem? It has nothing to do with DLP. Apparently someone thought that ECC would sound COOLER and SAFER if it is called DLP! And hence the DLP.

In DLP we try to solve x in equations like this: 6^x ≡ 8 mod 11. It is hard (with big numbers) because 6^x can get quite big, many times bigger than the (mod 11) and you will have to subtract 11 many many times.
eg. 6^7= 279936 =8 mod 11. That makes it hard to "guess" x and you will have to try different x values to find the correct one.

In the case of ECDLP we go from 1 to the private key and NEVER go over the order n of the curve.

So basically we try to solve x (x=private key) from  x*G=P , where G is point representing 1 in this system and P is the public key point, and x is always between 1 and n.

The possible weakness comes from the fact that we NEVER go over the order n of the curve. Unlike in DLP, which goes over the "order" (=11 in the example above) many many many times.

Because we always stay between 1 and n, we are not really dealing with DLP and some possibilities arise.

Odd or even. If we can reliably know if a point is odd or even, we can also break ECC.
One point about Finite fields is that they do NOT hide if a number is odd or even.
For example. Finite field of 11 points.

0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8...

If we ALWAYS stay in the first "round" of the field 0-10 (like we do in ECC) the numbers are as they are. 1,3,5,7,9 are odd, 2,4,6,8,10 are even.
So even if odd and even are not really defined inside finite fields, when we stay in the first "round", then odd and even work like they do in the real world.
If we go to the second "round" then odd and even would flip around. eg. odd number 13=13 mod 11=2 which "looks" like an even number. But we never go there, because we are actually not dealing with a DLP problem.  

Luckily for the safety of Bitcoin, Bitcoin uses coordinate points instead of numbers.
Finding out if a point is odd or even is hard. How can you define if a point (8,19) is odd or even? Can it be done?

If you divide the point by 2 it will of-course behave differently depending on if the point is odd or even, but since the result is symmetrical this wont lead very far.

But the conclusion was that they did not get it to work, and ECC is still safe. FOR NOW.

Wonder if this kind of work is the reason NSA stopped recommending ECC.

The generator point G is a part of the definition of secp256k1. If you change the G, then you are not using secp256k1 any longer.

And why would you want to change the G that is used. The choice of G does NOT affect the security of the curve in any way, since IF there exists even one weak generator for curve secp256k1, then it can be used in cracking the curve with any choice of G.

But to your question. You can create a curve with any curve parameters you want, but then you will have to give the curve parameters manually, since you are no longer using secp256k1...

If that would happen, I would bet it would be because NSA has cracked the crypto behind bitcoin and not because they are the creators behind bitcoin.

After all NSA does have a big budget for cracking encryption...

I have used "Aktia Wallet" https://www.aktia.fi/fi/aktia-wallet
They offer a virtual mastercard, that works well and is cheap to use. it is in Euros, €

Some good points of Aktia wallet:

• Opening the wallet is free
• Transferring money to the wallet is also free for sums over 50€
• You can create as many virtual credit cards as you want to
• You can delete a card whenever you want to
• No extra fees for using the cards
• You can get a payment sticker for 5€. (it is valid for 2 years)
• They have a nice and easy interface in net and the phone app.

When you have active virtual credit cards, they charge 1€/month total, regardless of how many cards you have created. When you do not have any cards it is 0€/month.
These virtual mastercards work wherever mastercard work. (everywhere that I have tried so far)

The payment sticker is also handy. You can glue it to your phone or wherever and it works in most shops, but the total sum has to be below 25€.

To get it, you have to identify yourself and I am not sure in what countries Aktia offers this service  

PS. I have a regular credit card too, but I NEVER use it in the net. Virtual cards are much safer.

That is a good thing. Bitcoin price will keep going up, and soon we will be talking about mBTC:s instead of BTC:s


Personally I think there are already more than 21 million "bitcoins" in "circulation".

Who knows how many "bitcoins" exchanges have already sold! They can use standard banking practices including fractional reserve banking, and sell more bitcoins than they actually have.
They can have 2 bitcoins and sell 10 to their customers.

No-one would know a thing, because too many people are actually storing their "bitcoins" in exchanges.

This can continue until enough people will stop keeping their coins in exchanges.